She’d gone from prep schooler to gun felon — but today, her slate was wiped clean.
Former “Preppy Gun Moll” Afrika Owes cried tears of happiness in a Manhattan courtroom as her conviction as a young gangster and gun runner was vacated on agreement by a judge and prosecutors.
“Actions speak louder than words,” the young scholar said outside court, smiling, when asked to comment on her saga. “I don’t want to water it down.”
Owes’ saga had earned headlines in 2011, when prosecutors announced they’d caught the then 16-year-old on a taped phone call, agreeing to transport three guns for her drug kingpin boyfriend, who headed Harlem’s dreaded 137th Street gang.
The brainy Owes had been a scholarship student at the exclusive Deerfield Academy western Massachusetts. The headlines became still bigger after Owes’ $25,000 cash bail was posted by the influential Abyssinian Baptist Church — the very church that had been begging Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance to do something about her gang.
Today, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin noted that Owes has served almost six months jail, had abided by all the requirements of the court by earning her high school diploma at Lower Manhattan’s Millennium School, and has finished her first semester as a scholarship student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate Geneva.
The judge then sentenced her under the state youthful offender program, under which her record will be sealed. She’ll remain under the judge’s supervision for the next year, during which time she must stay out of trouble or risk a sentence of up to 1 1/3 to four years prison.
Owes’ life had been spinning out of control before her arrest — but she has now turned herself around, said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Ryan.
“This is what the New York legislature had in mind when it provided for youthful offender adjudication,” Owes’ lawyer, Elsie Chandler, said after the sentencing.
Chandler credited the KIPP Public Public School network, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and the lawyers of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, where she works, for their hard work and unwavering belief that Owes would succeed.
“I’ve known her since she was four,” church deacon Bobby Anderson said after congratulating Owes. “You have to look at the individual, not just what they are charged with,” he said.
“She’s a good person, and we knew her. That’s why we did it,” Anderson said of the church posting Owes’ bail. “She didn’t have to prove me right. I knew her.”
Owes has been on the Dean’s List for two semesters since beginning at Hobart, her lawyer noted.